Inevitable Ascension

The world itself may have been dead and dying, but life for the inhabitants could still be bliss. She would create a utopia.

Now, that little snippet you just read should tell you straight away how ambitious and trending towards the high-achiever camp ‘she’ named Violina is…

The innocent never waver from doing what’s right, even if it means drowning the world in fire.

Violina had been burned and betrayed by mankind ever since she sprang into existence. They named her a heretic and condemned her to a pit to live and die in agony. Though she sat stranded, starved and bloodied, she would not submit. Violina, the girl who had been mocked and hunted for rejecting the warped ideals of artificial authority, would lay down her own law.

Inevitable Ascension — The rapid-fire action/adventure novel packed with a host of twists that will make your mind explode! But not literally, otherwise that would be really gross

I will say this straight away- YES! This book has ‘rapid-fire action/adventure with a host of twists that will make your mind explode‘ and that is always a good thing. Unfortunately, the action and twists alone weren’t enough for me. I was unable to get a connection with the two female main characters. Yes they have sass and they’re both quite funky and kick-ass but something was missing for me… And I have no clue what that was. Maybe there was too much action and fast forward/rewind to have some constant action which left me wanting for more in terms of actually clicking with the characters to start liking them before I started disliking them?

There is time travel involved- into the Dark Ages, back to the present, into the future and to Ice Age, so the plot itself was complex enough. I have never really enjoyed time-travel aspect in any stories and I realized why… Time travel makes any story, for me, so anticlimactic! There’s a build up, a problem, and obstacle and it will all be undone because whoosh we’ve travelled in time and all is A-OK! If you, however enjoy time travel stories- you check this book out!

So, shit hits the fan, girls end up stepping through a vortex, 500 years back in time, and into an adventure of their life. Enter butterfly-effect. The world is a bad place to live in and they literally go on a killing spree to get rid of all the baddies so that they can go back to the present and enjoy their lives in lavish luxury having solved all the problems of the world.

Even though I kind of liked Lux for her humor, optimism and snark, at around the halfway mark I started disliking Violina’s take on things. ‘The innocent never waver from doing what’s right, even if it means drowning the world in fire.’ Yes, they’re somewhere in the past or future and so what if they kill people because by getting the butterfly effect right, all the killing will be undone anyway, so why feel guilty? I just didn’t like it. Yes, there’s logic behind it to base the whole book on, and most of the readers might enjoy such a turn of characteristics but I had other expectations.

Lux and Violina constantly fight for their own independent freedom. It is their main driver- to be as far away from the governance, the world and its people because, to them,they’re all full of shit and mean. Yet, this is exactly what the girls turned into themselves. Power corrupted their minds. Their ambitions and love for rich freedom turned them exactly into those people they so hated, time travel and butterfly effect or not. From those two characters the feeling I got throughout the book was that Violina and Lux were the only two people in the world (past, present and future) who had any brains left in their heads and saw themselves as the holy saviours of the whole show. High horse, much? 🙂

Having said that- it was definitely different and refreshing to read something that breaks the character limits… The MCs don’t always have to be heroes in shining armour and maybe a good dose of arrogance and initiative was just the thing the world needed to fix itself?

Overall: 2**- It was OK. Even though this book was not to my tastes, maybe I misunderstood the whole book completely, there are still plenty of interesting aspects, such as: immortality, ancient gods and goddesses, men of faith also known as lunatics (OK, Separatists actually), blood, guts and killing, steampunk elements. And I really like the cover! I would also like to point out that the average rating of this book on Goodreads is over the 4.5 mark and most people enjoyed it immensely so don’t let my ramblings get in the way for you to try out this book.

Thanks to the couple-team of V.K. McAllister for providing me a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Post navigation

5 comments

I can see why you weren’t over the moon with this one. As interesting as it might be to have the MC’s being selfish and ‘different’, you still need a certain dose of sympathy or some sort of connection to be able to get the feels right. And time travelling is always a fickle bitch. If you really take a good look at Einstein’s view on it (which involves a lot of math = ugh), going back in time isn’t possible at all without disastrous effects. (I still enjoy fiction about it for the sake of fulfilling some childish kind of fantasies, though [Hello Scottish half naked warrior! No, I wouldn’t mind taking off your kilt at all.]). Great review! 🙂 And that cover would’ve drawn me in as well ;).

Oh holy hell… you’re comment is spot on and full of wisdom… you’re so right, a certain dose of sympathy is necessary.
LOL @ Scottish half naked warrior 😀 bloody hell, that’s all I’ll be able to think about now for the whole day! 😀